Implicational Universals as Predictors of Word Order Change

Abstract

Implicational universals of the form ‘If a language has some word order P, then it also has word order(s) Q’ are widely used to explain word order change. A language which develops word order P without having Q is said to be universally inconsistent, and it is predicted that it will re-introduce consistency by subsequently acquiring Q. This paper, however, argues against the validity of such a paradigm. The current assumption that the early western Indo-European dialects are inconsistent is founded on inadequate formulations of the synchronic universals. First, more precise formulations are given for some basic word order universals in a large body of languages ; then their predictions are tested against all the early daughter languages of Indo-European (using data from Friedrich 1975). None of these dialects exhibits inconsistency; hence we have no evidence for the reintroduction of consistency as a valid mechanism of syntactic change. It is shown, using historical data from Germanic, that implicational universals can nonetheless make correct predictions for the relative timing and manner of word order changes, but only on the assumption that languages in evolution obey synchronic universals. Some purely theoretical arguments are provided to support the empirical findings, and an alternative explanatory model of word order change is outlined.

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